Green Life – the day after Valentine’s

We made it through the excitement of Valentine’s Day. The parties are over. The dinner is over. Done. What do we have to show for it? A pile of candy and paper Valentine’s. Is Valentine’s day turning into the new Halloween? I sure hope not. Now the question is, what do we do with all of those Valentine’s?

Truth be told, I love reading the little messages and seeing how the kids writing skills have developed over the years. It’s quite lovely. But, the reality is that I don’t want to have tiny piles of paper all over my house. So, in our house here is what we do.

Read – The girls have about a week or two to read and re-read their Valentine’s. After all it took someone a lot of time and effort to write out all of those names. The key is the Valentine’s must all stay together in a small bag.

Recycle – After a couple of weeks it is time to find a new life for those Valentine’s. We sort the Valentine’s according to colour and add them to our craft cabinet. In fact, this year we’ll be turning our Valentine’s into collage art – like our shamrocks and rainbows.

Reuse – In much the same way that we reuse Christmas cards at Christmas, we can reuse our Valentine’s for next Valentine’s Day. With a few snips with the scissors the cards can be totally reinvented! In fact think next year we will use our old Valentine’s to create a new string of hearts for the front door. I would show you images, but we haven’t passed the 2 week mark and I was told “don’t touch my special Valentine’s!”

My heart swelled as I read this story about a couple in the UK who have been exchanging the same Valentine card for the last 70 years! Such a beautiful story….have a read here.